I'm using MediaMonkey to create playlists for my fuze. The playlist does show up on the fuze but when i select it it's just empty and no songs are selected. can anyone help me? i'm saving all the playlist files (m3u files) in a separate folder called "playlists", if that matters.

thanks.

Skinjob

04-27-2008 02:19 PM

It sounds like the paths in the playlists are not correct. The paths to the individual files in the playlist must be relative to the location of the playlist. In other words if your playlists are in \playlists and all you music files are in artist and album folders under \music then the paths inside the m3u files need to look like ..\music\SomeArtist\SomeAlbum\SomeTrack.mp3.

moto

04-27-2008 06:46 PM

the path on the m3u files seems to be correct. this is how the folders are structured in my fuze:

It looks like the problem I described. The example path you gave is relative to the root of the player, not relative to the location of the playlist. Even though the path you gave is valid, the player basically tacks on the location of the playlist to the beginning of all the paths in the playlist.

So in your example, \music\artist\title.mp3 would become \playlists\music\artist\title.mp3. Which of course is not valid.

Try changing the path to ..\music\artist\title.mp3. That would become \playlists\..\music\artist\title.mp3, which is valid. Although I don't know for sure if the "..\" notation is supported, I've never tried it.

As a simpler test you could move your playlist to the root of the player and just remove the leading backslash from the paths. Then music\artist\title.mp3 would become \music\artist\title.mp3. That definitely works.

I use a \Music\Artist\Album style folder structure and I keep my playlists in the \Music folder. So my paths all look like Album\Artist\Track.mp3.

Hopefully you get the idea now.

BTW, I use Winamp to sync, which always creates absolute paths like your first example. I ended up having to create a little batch file to fix the paths in the playlists after syncing. I used the amusingly named FART (Find and Replace Tool): http://sourceforge.net/projects/fart-it/. It's a free command line tool to replace or remove text in a text file. You might want to check it out.

moto

04-29-2008 01:35 AM

thanks for the detailed reply. i will experiment when i get the time and get back at you.

In which case, the paths in the playlist should look like:
Music\Artist\Track1.mp3
Music\Artist\Track2.mp3
Music\Artist\Track3.mp3

I noticed your example paths above have forward slashes "/" instead of back slashes "\". Is that actually case? If so, try changing to back slashes.

I don't actually have a Fuze, but m3u playlists work as I described on my 4GB Clip. My understanding is that the Fuze has exactly the same playlist capability as the Clip. Also, the behavior you're seeing (playlist shows up but appears blank) is exactly what I saw on my Clip when the paths in the playlist were not correct. So I still suspect there has to be something wrong with the paths in your playlist.

Quote:

Originally Posted by moto
(Post 242706)

by the way, how do i get rid of the songs that are pre-loaded on the fuze?? :confused:

Make sure the Fuze is in MTP mode, then just delete everything using Windows Explorer. Your computer will only see the files that were added under the current USB mode. In other words, your computer can't see files that were added in MTP mode if your are currently connected in MSC mode (and viceversa). I believe the player iteself will see all the files added in either mode.

However, I'm not sure if m3u playlists work in MTP mode. I don't currently have my Clip to try it. Maybe that's the problem? I only use MSC mode. What USB mode are you using?

moto

04-30-2008 11:09 PM

I was creating .m3u files in MSC mode. once i switched to MTP mode, MediaMonkey automatically made playlists in .pla files and now they are working properly..

the slashes in the .m3u files were in the proper direction (back slashes). i suppose i could live with using MTP mode.. it's not as bad as i heard it was.

Skinjob

05-01-2008 09:13 AM

Hmmm. It really should work. Do you have the latest firmware (see sticky at top of this forum)?

Maybe as one last test, put a single mp3 file in the root of the Fuze. Then put a m3u playlist in the root that only contains the file name of the single mp3 (no path).

Contents of m3u should look like:
#EXTM3U
SomeSong.mp3

That should eliminate any path issues.

moto

05-02-2008 03:12 PM

I added "#EXTM3U" on the first line of the m3u files and now the list of songs will show up properly when i select the playlist in the fuze.... But, when i choose a song, it won't play anything.

the .pla files made in MTP mode are working fine, however.

this is kinda strange :?

Skinjob

05-02-2008 04:20 PM

Did you try my suggestion of putting a single mp3 & playlist in the root with just the file name in the playlist?

moto

05-02-2008 05:13 PM

yeah. i'm getting the same result. playlist will show up on the fuze and when i select the play list, the songs will show up properly as well. but when i try to play it, it just won't.

inpheaux

05-10-2008 01:46 AM

I've been working on sorting out how to get full control of playlists on the 8Gb Fuze, specifically attempting to make it let me use playlists that pull from both the main memory and sdcard. I've been using MSC mode since it lets you use M3U playlists. I was digging through MTABLE.SYS and found that the Fuze's "internal" drive letters seem to be mmc:0:\ for the onboard memory and mmc:1:\ for the sdcard slot.

I've tried making various playlists, but the ONLY ones I have gotten to work are straight M3U playlists that start with #EXTM3U that use relative paths [eg, no leading backslash]. If you try to use an absolute path like:

mmc:0:\path\to\file.mp3

it doesn't show up as a valid path and the playlist turns up blank.

I know the stuff is stored that way. It says so right in the MTABLE.SYS. I know that with real filesystems you can use absolute paths in your M3U's all day long. Does anyone have any idea why it isn't working? Alternatively, is there a way to make cross-storage playlists in MTP mode? I tried looking into that, but can't stand WMP11.

Also, for what it's worth, I had no success using ..\ in any of my experiments. You apparently can't traverse the directory tree.

Skinjob

05-20-2008 09:09 AM

@moto:

Don't know if you are still trying to get m3u playlists to work, but I thought I'd follow up. I finally got an 8GB Fuze myself and can report that m3u playlists do in fact work exactly the same as the Clip (and as I described above). The playlist just has to contain paths relative to the location of the playlist file itself. So you must still have some kind of path issue.

Based on inpheaux's testing, I guess ..\ doesn't work (never tried it myself). So the playlist must be somewhere in the path above the mp3 files. I guess in practice this means putting your playlists in the root or in \MUSIC. For example, my playlists are in the \MUSIC folder and my mp3s are in \MUSIC\<Artist>\<Album> folders. So the paths in my playlists always just contain <Artist>\<Album>\<Title>.mp3.

The only other gotcha is with large playlists (over 250 songs). Large playlists can take a long time to load. I have a 650 song playlists that takes many minutes to load. This is a known issue that should be fixed soon. They just fixed it in the new Clip FW that came out a few days ago, so I'm sure it's coming to the Fuze soon.

If you're still having trouble send me a PM with your email address and I'll send you a zip with a working sample.

Jerry Dahl

06-15-2008 05:03 PM

Sansa Fuze Playlist Creater

I wrote a Sansa Fuze Playlist Creator. It runs in the root directory and creates .m3u format playlists based on the directory structure. You can download the program in the "Playlist Troubles" thread.

Let me know how it works for you and any feedback and comments.
Thanks,
Jerry Dahl

Gmo

06-17-2008 07:00 PM

Thanks Skinjob - that was helpful and I think I've got the mu3 playlist figured out and working.

I'm connected by MSC.

Then using Windows Explorer I queued up a bunch of mp3s (stored in various folders in my Fuze (under the MUSIC directory)) I wanted to play using WMP 9.0 then changed the order to how I wanted the songs played and then saved an "m3u" playlist (from WMP) to the MUSIC folder on my Fuze.

When I start up my Fuze and go to Playlists I can see the m3u playlists and they will play the various songs from different (artist\album) folders under the Fuze's MUSIC directory in the order that I created them using WMP.

A bit awkard but at least I can get it working...

Also, using Win Explorer I can double click on an m3u on my Fuze and edit the playlist by either changing the song order, removing some songs or adding some new ones - and then remembering to save the edited playlist using the WMP "Save Playlist" command.

Gmo

06-17-2008 08:35 PM

BTW - regarding Moto's question about getting rid of the songs that are pre-loaded on the fuze - I couldn't see the songs in MSC mode so I couldn't delete them that way, so I just deleted them using the menu on the Fuze - ie. when the song is playing you hit the menu (6 o'clock position on the wheel) and scroll down to "Delete Song?" (then confirm yes) and the song is gone.

Takes awhile to click through the handful of songs but it's a straight forward way to get rid of them.

V3ndetta

07-08-2008 09:58 PM

Ummm I got the same question about the playlist but I use this program called Aimp Player will the same technique work for this program?